The moderating role of government subsidies on the relationship between teacher stress and job satisfaction: Evidence from China

Teacher stress negatively affects job satisfaction. However, less known is whether more government subsidies can mitigate teacher stress. To this end, this study examines the moderating effect of government subsidies on teacher job satisfaction. Two-level Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) was used. The data were obtained from the 2014 wave of China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), which provides a nationally representative dataset on Chinese 7th-grade teachers. The job demands-resources (JD-R) model was used to analyze this issue. Estimation results show that government subsidies can moderate the negative relationship between teacher stress and job satisfaction. These findings provide evidence that government subsidies can mitigate the negative effect of teacher stress on job satisfaction. The policy implications and research limitations are presented.